Afterimage: A VR Experience
Directed by Taqi Shaheen & Qasim Naeem
After Image is an immersive VR experience that allows visitors to step inside the layered history of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and experience how its architecture, meaning, and identity have transformed across centuries. Rather than presenting history as a linear narrative, After Image uses VR to make these successive layers tangible. Visitors can move between time periods, witnessing changes to the building’s architecture, interiors, religious imagery, rituals, and cultural significance.
By placing the viewer inside these transformations, After Image explores how buildings accumulate memory, conflict, erasure, and renewal, and how the same space can hold radically different meanings across time.